Category: General Fiction

All Stories, General Fiction

Why Demigods Roam Alone by Tom Sheehan

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What a silent, legless kick in the chest! A dead man afoot.

Here came a man I thought long dead, half smiling, book-laden, walking out of the library, not casually, not the least, but the way certain men leave libraries, loaded with surprise, excitement, a hope for new intelligence. Short of handsome he was, but rugged-looking for an older guy, a sense of confidence moving afoot. I thought, a man knowing what he wants and has his hands on it. In each arm nestled a clutch of books; rugged wrists and hands gripping the books tightly, his poplin jacket sleeves taut as ropes.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Dream-Dresser by S. A. Leavesley

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What the hell was she going to do? Claudia interrogated herself as she turned from the current strangeness of her reflection in the mirror to inspect her feelings. They were…she didn’t know how to describe them. Unsettled and unsettling? For the first time in twenty-five years, she scowled. Not only did she scowl, but her lips didn’t then pull automatically into a copycat expression of the person she’d last been with. The scowl didn’t feel right though, any more than her usual shape-shifting smile did. Or the unusual summer slacks and T-shirt she was wearing.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Metal Box by Tom Sheehan

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It was so damn petty that not one person in the entire family really knew how or where or when the rift began. It was there just as suddenly as the January thaw, being felt, being known, but still in all somewhat unbelievable. And every one of us, to the last thinking one of us, looked to Grandfather John Templemore to perform the cure, re-forge family ties, focus attention to proper matters. Hadn’t that man accomplished, so many times, the near impossible? The wizened little man with the piercing blue eyes that could accost you or lay balm on your wounds. The white-bearded sage who reveled in poetry and masters of the language. The articulate stone mason, his trowel now put away, who knew Yeats better than the classicists. Saturday evenings, on his wide porch fronting on the town, or deep in the pocket of his kitchen, the fire at amble, he it was who took us spellbound into the magic of joy, crowding us with the language.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Writing

Week 239 – Cat’s Insistence, Hero Worshipping And Inventive Funding.

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The weeks are fair flying by, it won’t be long until we’re all fossils with only a few printed pages of our stories to remind the world that we had been here.

As you can read, I’m in a happier mood than normal as I write Week 239!

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

The Killers by Michelle Wilson

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He was a peaceful baby with a face like Buddha who grew into a sensitive toddler: enormous eyes that took in everything and missed nothing. When he fell he cried, but he always recovered after the usual spell of tears.

What a precious child, we thought. Life will be hard on him.

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All Stories, General Fiction

When Normal Becomes Real by Harrison Kim

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Everyone’s queued up in the cafe, a string line of heads, some with hats, waiting. It’s a fairly conventional straggle and Drew stands with it.  Good to have some order.  The line’s almost out the door.  Lights fall bright around him, with invisible music. Something by the Soul Twisters.  He feels a huge space above him, compared to his regular quarters. His official security man Cody stands assertive and blocks the view ahead.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Everything’s Opposite by Jake K

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Everything is opposite.  That’s what I tell my therapist.  Like a snakebite, the first-aid is not to wash the wound.  You suck the venom out because whatever you swallow, your stomach kills.  Or a concussion.  People say never sleep after a concussion.   But sleep is how your brain recovers.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Fred Rippon’s Mushroom House by Tom Sheehan

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“What the good Jesus!” Pete Tura yelled and disappeared, and as he said it again, his voice muffled, his mouth most likely closed by horse manure, a whole nine yards of it, the bottom of the collection box hanging from the second floor of the Hood’s Milk Company horse barn in West Lynn let go, taking my pal with it. I last saw one arm, not waving goodbye, probably trying to keep the pitchfork from doing him damage. Possibly he had tried to throw it behind him. That innocent weapon of deadly tines was not in sight as I peered down into the mixture of black clutter and hay still settling down with a metronomic slowness you could count.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Writing

Week 238 – Writing From The Nasty, Writing With My Buddies And ‘You’re Going To Put That Where?’

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Here we are at Week 238.

Yet again, the number is as interesting as listening to a conversation about moisturising. And before anyone thinks I’m being sexist, I’m not. Not being gender specific is an even sadder state of affairs.

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